About FUN & FAQ

What is GWayFUN?

We are an unofficial fan community for Gerard Way that we like to say is run for and by you.

How did FUN first start?

This page initially started when a group of friends who ran Gerard Way fan pages decided to start a site were we could promote and boost the signal of our other pages and show group support for each other like we had been in our hilariously amazing group chats. Overtime FUN took on a life of it’s own and it was impossible for so many people to keep signing off and on to FUN and then back onto their own pages to repeat the work.

The FUN twitter account continued to evolve and change and grow keeping it’s core principle to be as supportive as possible to all fan pages who wished to be a part of our family and help newer pages get a good foothold in the community while being as inclusive as possible to all, both fan pages and fans alike.

Due to hectic lifestyles and changes running the FUN twitter eventually became the responsibility of the person who created the concept. (Though thankfully all the fan pages do still work with FUN and we are all still friends.) To keep up we found friends within the FUN community who did not own fan pages that were willing to help us with keeping the page active which includes the lovely Eva who helps us run the twitter and the beautifully talented Aliisa who helps us run the instagram.

As FUN continues to grow so does our staff so please be sure to check our staff page often to keep up with who’s who on FUN!

How did you come up with the concept?

Though I won’t get political here, I will say that with the state of the world and the crisis of equality that is going on within the US these days, it left me with an overwhelming desire to want to change things and bring people closer together no matter what size, age, race, religion, country, language, sexuality, gender identity they may be. I feel like that’s something Gerard has always tried to do, so I decided to bring my own desires into this fandom and see if we could all come together and create a safe place where everyone belongs.

Though things have gotten worse in recent years, this is not necessarily a new concept for me. I just chose to approach it differently than I had in the past. Before FUN I ran a charity based MCR fan community that looked pretty similar to what you see here with FUN now. Love and equality has and always will be my driving force.

What does the FUN in GWayFUN stand for?

In our early days it stood for Fansites United Network- a distinct nod to one of our core values that we still keep: to provide support and friendship to all fansites who would like to join us.

These days we have adopted Fans UNited because as we have grown so has our family and not everyone in our family has a fan page. We wanted to switch the tone ever so slightly to give a nod to one of our other core values, which is to be all inclusive to everyone.

Since a fanpage can be a fan but a fan doesn’t necessarily have a fanpage we decided to opt for the more inclusive name, but both values are still very present here. We’re very much still the Fansites United Network but we are also Fans who are United.

What are FUN’s core principles?

They are so simple. Ready? Be excellent to each other.

Support Gerard as much as we possibly can in an effort to thank him for all he has done for us.

Support each other as much as we possibly can in an effort to be “what tomorrow needs”.

Support individuality and creative thinking/art.

Be original.

Support positive energy and create an endless supply of it.

How can I become an affiliate?

Glad you’re asking! We’d love to have you! Please take a moment to read the guidelines and if you think your page would be a good fit with FUN or you have further questions, shoot us an email or DM us on twitter and we’ll get back to you as quick as we can!

Who is affiliated with FUN?

There are a lot of amazing people we are honored to be affiliated with. Please check our affiliates page for a full list and be sure to check out the affiliates news section to see what everyone is up to!

How do I login to comment, chat or post in forums?

At the top of the website you will see a wordpress looking tool bar that will give you the option to login. That one login allows you to: create your own profile, add friends, create your own posts on your profile, comment on our posts, chat and post on forums.

I can create a profile, add friends and create my own posts?

Yup. It’s basically GerardBook? Gitter? We’re still working out the name, obvi, but basically it’s our own internal social media! You can upload your own photos to create a banner and default pic, you can create posts like you would on twitter, you can add friends, you can even @mention those friends and they will receive notifications!

But can I DM my friends?

Si! When chat is live and both you and your friend are available you will be able to send a private message to them. Though I do wish to stress here that we can’t police your private conversations. This is either we allow them or we don’t. If this feature becomes problematic we will discontinue the feature, so please be respectful.

Why does chat not always show up when I come to FUN?

The safety of our friends is the most important thing to us here at FUN, so we only have chat opened when a moderator is available to make sure everyone feels safe and has a great time. When chat is available a chat bubble will appear in the lower right corner of your screen. Simply login to FUN and come join us! We will post on twitter when chat’s go live!

Why do I have to sign in to come to chat?

We weren’t sure if wanted to limit this as a members only function, but in the end we decided to do so because it’s a step that bars spam bots from seeking out and targeting the chat.

Why do I have to wait for a moderator to approve my forum post?

With the internet being a dark scary thing the vast majority of the time we do our very best to make sure FUN stays a place of positive energy where everyone can enjoy being here. With that in mind we made the decision to moderate all posts for the first month of being open. We do this to make sure you’re fully understanding the rules and if not we can address it with you quietly and make sure everyone has a good time. We’re not into public shaming or having to delete posts if they don’t follow the rules. We’d rather make sure we all learn the rules together and can move forward and have FUN.

Once we’re sure everyone is getting it and understands the rules we will lift the moderation and you will be allowed to post freely while moderators are available to watch the forums. Once we choose to do this, forum posts will only need to wait for approval when a moderator is not readily available. (The last time I ran a site with forums we had spam porn bots ruling the roost, so this is why).

Will you ever allow forum posts to not require approval when a moderator is not available?

That’s a great question, and one we are still asking ourselves at the time of site launch. We have decided for the first month we will require approval of all posts, after that we will be laid back and let you post freely when we are here, if that goes well for a while, we may consider opening the forums up to not requiring approval at all, but we need to wait and see how it goes first. So basically? If you want us to lift this, be amazing in forums and it could happen!

Do I have to talk about just Gerard in chat or forums?

Nah. Obviously we expect him to be the main topic of interest, but we’re a community and a community is rarely one dimensional. Gerard himself has many interests, so do we. It’s ok to talk about the other stuff you love too and find friends that you have more than one thing in common with.

We have created sections in the forums where you can post about whatever you would like (as long as it doesn’t break site rules). So go ahead! Run over to the Free For All forums and post a new topic about Twenty One Pilots, Star Wars or whatever it is you want to talk about. (Though you may wanna check to see if someone else has already started a thread similar to what you want to talk about that you can contribute to!)

I don’t see a forum category that fits the topic I want to post about.

Tell us! This is a community, which means we did our best to give you a huge start at launch, but your feedback and what you want to see on the site is valued. If there is something you’d like to see on the forums (or the site) let us know! If it fits with what we are trying to do we will likely add it for you.

What is the report feature on the forums?

While we the moderators try our hardest to keep up with everything, we can’t always put eyes on absolutely every single post. That said, we included a feature in forums that allows members of FUN to report posts to us. This doesn’t mean that the post is automatically taken down, it just means it’s flagged for immediate moderation and staff will take a look at it and if it is breaking a rule, take action at that point. So help us out. If you see something that breaks a rule, let us know. But let’s not make this about policing everybody. We want everyone to be able to have a good time here and be themselves. That means we’re not always going to agree with someone’s opinion on FUN, but that’s not a reason to report it.

If I report something will the person know I reported them?

Nope. The only people that will know it’s been reported are the moderators who will get the notification.

Can I become a member of staff?

If the need arises that we find ourselves looking for a specific skill or additional moderators we will look internally. We may at some point put out a call for help (Ex: Is anyone good with web design?). But more often than not we will look to see who is already doing what we’re looking for. (Ex: Who is in the forums everyday being positive and friendly and keeping with the tone of FUN? Who is consistently informing us of News before we’re aware? Who is great at ice breakers that get and keep the FUN Chats going? Who really knows their comic book shtuff?) If you’d like to be a member of staff be an amazing member of FUN and it just might happen!

(Don’t be afraid to let us know if you have a skill set that could be helpful to us though! Like if you’re the queen of Tumblr, you own at snapchat, you’re a photo editing genius, you’re fluent in other languages, please let us know!)

Do you get paid for being a member of staff?

FUN is a labor of love. Those that work on this site do so because they share a common interest and believe in what we are doing together. However, from time to time we do have internal giveaways that are specifically our way of thanking those who are here everyday working with us. It’s an incredibly FUN job, but not an easy job and we take our roles seriously to make sure everyone stays safe and has a great time.

Someone is being mean to me on FUN and I would have to break the rules to confront them, what do I do?

Reach out to one of the members of FUN staff and we will look into it for you. Everyone should feel safe here and if someone is being mean to you on one of our social media platforms, in comments, the forums or chats we will take action. That said, this does not mean we are the internet police. We can only correct what we can see, so if someone is being hurtful to you outside of FUN there is nothing we can do unfortunately. If you let us know of the situation we will be sure to keep an eye to make sure that when you’re here at FUN things are civil. (Example: If you broke up with your bff and they are a member of FUN we can not and will not pick a side unless you are being antagonized through FUN in some way and then we will step in).

This is also why it’s VERY important to choose who you decide to chat in dm with carefully. If we can’t see the original post, there’s nothing we can really do. Imagine if someone photoshopped a screen shot to make it look like you said something you didn’t and we banned you, it’d suck right?

What happens if I accidentally break a rule?

Well, Fuck. Sometimes it happens.
(Hey GWayFUN please be careful of the language)
Oh! Right. I forgot. Ok! I’m sorry!
(No worries. We all swear sometimes, just try not to make it a habit!)

What happens if I repeatedly break a rule?

It really depends. Me personally? I swear a LOT so it’s a struggle when I get chatting to omit certain words out of my language and I do understand that and we are all forgiving as long as it’s not every other word and not aimed at someone (“STFU FUN” am I joking or am I serious? It can be hard to tell, so please don’t do it). If we have to work at it, so do you. 😛

But if you’re coming into the forums or chats and talking about suicide or self harm that’s a serious situation we have to take seriously. Please understand we’d rather have you come to FUN and say “I’m having a bad day and could really use a friend.” or “I’m sad and I don’t know why.” these are ok things to say. But the second you say “I’m going to self-harm or worse” I’m going to be looking try to find a way to get you professional help. We take statements like this seriously and will remove them from the website and then contact someone in your area to make sure you’re safe. So basically, please don’t do it. We love you, but we’re not trained to help you with this. All we can do is point you to help or point help to you. Please always feel safe to ask us for where you can go to get help. This we will always help with.

Any taunt at a member of FUN that is meant to hurt is an immediate ban. We don’t want that here. This is a community which means there are going to be a lot of people with a lot of different views. It’s ok to disagree. It’s never ok to intentionally hurt or degrade someone.

So basically, it really depends on the rule being broken to determine how we deal with it. We’re not gonna ban you for life because you had a bad day or made a mistake. We’re not savages haha. But the post will be removed and you will be reminded of the rules. If you continue to break them we will deal with that when the time comes. Ok? Ok! Bleh I hate this topic.

What happens if I copy content from FUN and don’t give credit?

Well, we really hope that you just won’t, but if you do, you will be asked nicely to remove it or credit us (or if it’s news from an affiliate you sourced from FUN directly – them). Should you fail to do so we will be forced to fall back on our copyright for intellectual property. We created the FUN website to move away from a situation where we had no ground to stand on when we were repeatedly plagiarized.

All content on this website is original unless otherwise stated. We go to great lengths to give credit to anyone who helps us or we use content from (professional, fan or fan page). All youtube videos we have posted from our personal youtube channel are from our own personal collection. All photos with the @GWayFUN watermark are our personal property. All of these items have been copyrighted and should someone decide to pass them off as their own without credit we will take action that could lead up to your site being taken down. So basically, just don’t do it. Besides, it is our personal experience that nobody wants to see the same site twice. You’re doing yourself a disservice to copy anything. Be original.)

What if I copy content from FUN but I give credit?

Then we have no problems. That is what we are here for. A community. A community is give and take. We do this for you, but we expect to receive credit back for what we do and are happy to help you promote whatever original content you create as well!

But, it’s the internet, I could have just googled like you did to find this information.

Sure, you could have. But it would take you years to nail down all that we have…we know, because it took us years to do it. Plus a lot came from our personal collection of magazines/interviews/books/DVDs/personal knowledge(Yes, it helps when you’ve been a long time fan and know what to search for) etc. So please respect the time and effort we put into the site. We don’t want to have to enforce this rule, but we will if we have to.

What if I want to repost something a fan submitted in the FUN Stuff area?

Same deal. Credit the original source. We don’t expect credit for a drawing someone else did, but we expect that if you love it and want to repost it somewhere else you’ll take the time to credit the artist.

What if I want to repost pictures of Gerard that I’ve found here?

We have no copyright claim on images we didn’t personally take, but photography is an art form. If we can find the photographers credits we post them, and we would implore you to do the same.

What if I just want to take this one quote from Gerard that’s in the extensive bio?

Now you’re just over thinking it. 😉 We want FUN to be a resource for you that you can learn about stuff you maybe didn’t know, and have a community of friends in the forums and chat that you can share that with. We are more interested in the fact that some people out there will try to recreate our page under a different name and pass it off as their own ideas or work and that’s never ok. Writing is also an art form. Web designing is an art form. The hours spent frustratingly banging our heads off walls to get the menu to work right with all the content and the responsive web browser so you could view FUN on all devices and holy hannah setting up that forum – these are the things that we ask credit for and ask not be reproduced because we took a lot of time and spent a lot of our own money to do these things.

Basically we’re just saying that the creators of FUN deserve the same respect and kindness that they’ve worked hard to create for everyone who comes here. That sounds pretty reasonable, right? Alright, enough of this- lets have some FUN!

Have a question that’s not answered here? Let us know in the FUN FAQ’s forum!